Death of Spring
by llamajoy
Summary: the warlord series. naaza - anubisu - sh'ten - rajura. YAOI.
1. Autumn's Anticipation

**Death of Spring: Autumn's Anticipation**

there's a room where the light won't find you

holding hands while the walls come tumbling down

when they do i'll be right behind you

so glad we've almost made it

so sad they had to fade it

everybody wants to rule the world

-- tears for fears

There are three of you.

One a samurai, the ghost of a ritual battle scar aching on his cheek, as if some warrior-artist had painted it there, using his face as a brutal canvas. He moves as blue-black as the dappled shadows in a cedar forest in midwinter, and there is cold behind him wherever he goes, following him like the wolves he calls companions. Bleak frost in his eyes, and the bark of his laughter, wolf-master warrior, dancing a stylized dance with death, living still-- even in the chrysanthemum agelessness of the Dynasty-- as a samurai would.

The other, a magic-wielder, illusion-master. Even before his heartbeat slowed to the youjakai's unearthly rhythm, he summoned much energy and power in those slender long fingers, behind that calculating eye. How many human story-weavers envied that keen mind, to twist and spin images out of lies and spiderwebs, to imbue them with such reality that that spinner himself believed? Spinning and sending them off to sleep, beautiful liar, wrapping them as flies in his silk until they dream of him. There is a muted glare about him, off the summerwhite of his hair, and everyone shudders to think what Words misspoken had turned his hair prematurely white, or lost him that eye.

Pureblooded men who chose their paths, listened to the whispering darkness in the wind, followed the promises there.

How long have you known you were different?

Boy, barefoot and not shivering, at the riverbank in autumn, toes slick with rivermud, gleeful to be alone. You watched the battle-colored leaves dancing a farewell to the sky, falling to earth. Morbid child, how you loved the fall, how real and resonant to stand beneath the dying forest.

Squelch messily to the side of the river, savoring the cool scent of lichens and things decaying. No one would think to find you here. Small lives living out their ordinary time beneath the mountain, they did not think too much. Rots the mind like crumbling moss on a fallen tree. Sigh deliciously, delighting in the green decaying coolness all around, the undersides of things. Rich with promise and the thick detritus of wasted life.

They wouldn't understand. Perhaps that is why you followed the call, to spite all the thin petty minds who would seek to bar your way.

"But measure out your simple time beneath the mountain-- Yamanouchi Naotoki--"

There had always been more for you than this, more than the shadow of a mortal mountain and the jealous whispers of kin. Keep your silence; your obedience was not for them.

Never quite human-- neither hot nor cold, eyelids that barely close even to dream. Were they not afraid, they may have hated you.

But you heard a terrifying call and thrilled to it, unsurprised to find sharp fangs in your smile. Join the man-ranks serving the Master-Demon, pledge your oddbeating heart to his undying service. It is what you have always wanted, sworn allegiance to something tremendous.

He makes you believe that you can change the world.

He gives you armor, and a whip of swords, a sweet fierce weapon to coil and strike. He can not give you venom-- for venom you have always had. What heady satisfaction to see the samurai and the mage take little half-steps back from you, watching you come to the full fruition of your power.

They fear that you are not quite sane. Laugh at them. Sane? Who knows anything of sanity, here in a netherrealm where no one ages and nothing ever dies and a demon who cannot even bleed is the master of all?

Lash out with your cobra-headed sword whip, moving so fast that your demon blood sings with it. Fighting your fellow Masho is like nothing else. Weapons in your hands, almost alive with your power, greedy to spill enemy blood. Feel the snake thrash beneath the surface, heartbeat cold as any autumn midnight.

You bring your own decay. Promise of disintegration, beautiful glory of dying. Your presence in the youjakai is living contradiction, beautiful anomaly. Call your armor and watch the leaves begin to fall, scattering around your upturned face, bloodcolored, or the goldyellow of dying suns.

Fellow warlords all, forged in fire and blood and the magic scent of immortal sakura. How fiercely you hate one another.

And in the end, how fiercely you love. Furious glory are your battles, simple poetry of sharp-edged motion, parody of death. And nights learning to exploit each other's weaknesses, in the shudder and silence unique to warrior-lovers.

It is a terrible tremendous joy, what you have found in the Dynasty. A sword-carved niche where you belonged-- hated and feared and needed, one of a balanced three.

Until *he* comes.

Unbidden as spring, an unlucky fourth into your midst. No one else can see that this spells the end of all you fought for, no one else can sense the impending change. But then, you have always been able to scent change on the wind, yearning for autumn even in spring's first bloom.

And *he* becomes the cherished favorite.

Your Master will not listen to your plea-- when you were yet weak enough to wish to make pleas-- blinded by the red-topped child's allure.

And surely he is beautiful. Already in his mortal eyes there is more of power than you had trained towards, a natural affinity to cruelty that rivals the force of the Masho combined. Youngest of all, the new warrior among you is keenly aware of his favored status, and the bittersweet hatred of his new companions.

The samurai falls for him first. Brother-warriors, both speak the language of death, both honor the fine terrible code of the fighter. Before their third bout, they are laughing hotly and struggling to best one another. And not only on the sparring field. Maybe it is that curtain of crimson hair, fire to warm the winter-dark warlord's icy soul. Aa. Close your eyes. Of such things are woven the dreams of demons. You would know.

You cannot tell when the mage's eyes soften to the cruelty Masho, when he inclines his head to watch the Oni dancing in a fight with something other than hot anger in his eyes. Watching the ogre, when he does not realize he himself is being observed. It takes you longer than usual-- keen-minded snake-- to recognize the bitterness in your veins as jealousy. When did the master of illusions fall under the spell of another? They whisper Words to each other in the eternal twilight, and it is all that you can do not to remember them, not to repeat them to yourself when you are alone. Their feathered sighs beneath the twin-mooned sky are like the wings of ravens, beating quiet omens into the night.

You never felt so alone, not even in the thick mortal dark of your mountain town, not even in the liquid stillness of the stagnating stream. No where to go to be rid of him, no cool hard rock to slide beneath and sleep away the spring.

You miss the savor of the three Masho, the hours of wicked-edged combat and the harsh laughter of your approving master, and the nights of elemental strength and flesh-song passion.

His hot-headed defiance has set your life off-kilter, and you yearn for nothing more than to bring him down.

And perhaps he knows it, perhaps he is fool enough to seek a reconciliation. Mortal simplicity, to think that warrior-friends fight better than warrior-rivals.

Whatever his reasons, he comes to you alone. After a period of training, with his armor just off, and his breath still hitching in his chest. Putting himself at such a disadvantage, he might know more of politics than you expected. You press your edge, and back him against a ricepaper screen. His kimono makes rustling noises against the flimsy rough texture of the wall, until he can move no further from you without ripping through the paper barrier.

Lowering your head till you can slip hissing words into his ear, you say, "Brave thing to do, confronting the Doku Masho all alone."

You stand of a height with him and his gaze does not waver. "The same could be said of the Oni Masho, Naaza. We are... well-matched."

Blink slowly, savoring his words. There is something of hunger lacing his tone, the call of unvanquished territory, enemy lands uncharted. Such hunger is something you could understand. "What do you seek from me?"

"A challenge," he says simply, and you think perhaps he moves a breath closer. Your eyes narrow, as you realize you have never, in fact, fought him alone. Tight, sharp smile. Always before your confrontations have been carefully formulaic, the four Masho in ritual training-battles.

You accept in two heartbeats, one pulse to weigh your opponent and one to thrill to the prospect of beating him. "Very well."

The two of you call your armor together, and it is delicious hatred to feel the springtime pull of his power contrasting with the autumn-touched flavor of your own. Opposites, perhaps equal. But he is a headstrong child and you will have no trouble besting him.

Unleash your sword-whip, slicing quicker than a snakestrike, dance with the ogre. He is more graceful than you expected, maneuvering through your fang-pronged attacks with all the simple elegance of a flower blooming. For all his spinning and rushing chains, his moves are as plain as sunlight.

Smile without moving your lips. Very well. The thick familiar aroma of fallen leaves wraps around you, your movements and your breath slowing to your inner rhythm, the inscrutable pace of decay. He cannot defeat the sweet dissolving strength of your venom.

His breathing is shallow and ragged, and all suddenly he is on one knee, chains fallen from shaking fingers. It seems too soon. You move smoothly to his side, your blade a whisper's caress against his neck. The slightest echo of cherryblossoms haunts the air around his face, the taste of fleeing spring.

Lick your lips, scenting the air for blood or danger. Or death.

And there it is, the unmistakable shadow-smell of death, like nothing else. Your demonblood shivers to its call. It is lurking, underneath the ageless still air that you have all learned to breathe. Perhaps it is the tinge of destiny that is choking him, making him struggle for breath. It takes only an instant for you to know that it is not your own death that you sense--

But the uneasiness does not fade.

"Sh'ten," you hear yourself saying, moved obscurely to feel-- something.

He leans, so slightly, into your blade, mad glint to his green eyes. "You needn't pity me, Doku Masho. You have won. So have your way with me."

Laugh, and wonder who indeed has won. You cannot hate a man who is going to die, not when you know you cannot be the one to kill him.

But neither can you ignore such a man, when he is on his knees before you, eyes half closed and fine strong profile silvered by the light of two unearthly moons. Beautiful.

Without moving your sword from his throat, you swivel behind him, the long sweep of his red hair trailing across your armored thigh. Lean down to him, captive between your blade and your body, and claim his bitter hotblossom mouth for your own, a warrior's kiss. He does not struggle, though his eyes gaze widely on your face. Wonder what he's seeing, looking so intently at your serpent eyes, this mortal child who wears the armor of cruelty and wields steel like a scattering of spring flowers.

Sheathe your serpent blade. For this moment, the spring is yours to take, and not with weapons of metal.

His body unfurls against yours, layers of armor sloughed away, fresh and sweet as if it were washed smooth by the rushing river. His fingers know the curve and hollow of flesh as cleverly as they would know how to handle any sword, and you lose yourself in the pleasure of him. And his mouth-- oh his mouth-- how long since you had a lover who could disintegrate the chaos inside you, perfect dissolving spiral toward oblivion--

When he is gone from you-- and with a stronger depth of feeling in his eyes-- you realize that now, all over again, you are measuring out a time beneath a mountain of silence, waiting.

If you were a samurai, perhaps you would take your own life, only death left with any meaning. Or, if you were a mage, perhaps you could form Words to grieve the passage of time. But you are neither.

And in the end, not much has changed. Imbalance is the first step to decay, as you know, snake-eyed autumn, waiting calmly for the death of spring.

~end part one~


	2. Winter's Deliverance

**Death of Spring: Winter's Deliverance**

winter's end promises of a long-lost friend

speaks to me of comfort

but i fear i have nothing to give

i have so much to lose here in this lonely place

tangled up in your embrace

there's nothing i'd like better than to fall

-- sarah mclachlan, "fear"

The armor of darkness had always been his, wrapped around him as cold and familiar as the winter that followed him. He knew it as well as he knew his own heartbeat, that last vestige of bitter humanity left to him in the netherrealm. The perfect sharpness of the breastplate, the fine long claws, the edged sword-- Anubis felt closer to the Yami yoroi than to anything else.

But lately the Master had found ways to make him uncertain, even of that.

Perhaps next He would take away the heartbeat, too, and then he would spend nights sprawled in mystified silence against a fellow Warlord's mute chest.

He shook his head. Naaza had been unusually silent of late, even for him, and there were few enough nights they spent in each other's company. Rajura-- he smiled, for a moment, imagining that the Gen Masho might create the illusion of a heartbeat, just to allay a useless fear.

And Sh'ten--

Well, there lay the problem. Too much of change, Anubis thought to himself, for a world created expressly for the purpose of denying it.

"Bring my Oni back to me," Arago thundered. "The man is lost to us, but I *must* have his armor."

Razorfine cracks slivered through Anubis' crystalline determination. ~What?~ "Surely, Master, Sh'ten Doji may yet--"

"Silence, my warrior." And there was no argument for that, not with the echoes of Arago's thunderous voice filling the throne room with shadowy threat.

And so they found themselves holding a captive Sh'ten prostrate before their Lord and Master. It was not an oddity to fight each other; thus had they been trained, honing their skills against one another, taunting each the other to prowess, with Arago's keen eye always watching. But this, this was different. Sh'ten was writhing angrily under their hands, with a hostility in the set of his back that had not been there since the beginning.

It hadn't been difficult to force Sh'ten to his knees. Anubis frowned. More fight, that's what he remembered. More resistance. What had happened to Sh'ten--

Rajura's fingers held mercilessly to Sh'ten's hair, tilting his head back to face his angry Master. Those could not be the hands of a fellow warrior, even less the hands of a lover, not any longer. Not with that white hot anger that burned along their pulse, and the sheen of vengeance in his eye.

What had happened to all of them?

Anubis felt the bewildering rush of wrongness, time and space incongruous, mismatched. His armor-- his Yami yoroi, his *self*-- felt odd against his skin, disconcerting like a new ceremony kimono still stiff, unworn.

Something Naaza had said to him, once-- he narrowed wolf-blue eyes, opened his mouth in a fierce not-smile. Was this what it was to scent death? Something older than blood hung in the air, sharper than steel or winter moonlight.

And Sh'ten tense and furious beneath their outstretched hands, four armors humming a dangerous current of change.

Not since he was called through the Gates to the youjakai had Anubis felt so... He could not name it, not here. The unbeating heart of the Dynasty cradled them fiercely in its perfect satin darkness, and there were no words for discontent.

Sh'ten was to be cast into the pit, the molten hollow that Arago cherished at the base of his temple-throne room. Always Anubis had thought of the place as sheer elemental energy, liquid fire enough to burn away their impurities. But now, as Sh'ten's eyes darkened and his hands tightened to fists, Anubis thought not of the Masho honing their skill, but of a man, chained in a prison.

The traitorous word-- *dungeon*-- flickered through his consciousness like a shadow across the moon, a wrong sort of darkness.

"Yes, Arago-sama," his voice obeyed before his mind could betray him. The Master's eyes gleamed carnelian-hot for an instant, and then sent the two of them to the-- to the--

To the dungeon. With the eerie rush of chill air dissolving around them, Arago's magic shifted them through the youjakai. Anubis' hands held cruelly tight to Sh'ten's shoulders, not only to keep him during the transport, but to maintain his own unsteady balance.

Arago had said it, with his eyes, with the wave of his magic. ~Take him to the dungeon.~

The Oni Masho had always been too clever for his own good, and Anubis forgot to change his expression as Sh'ten wrenched out of his grasp and spun to face him. All his uncertainty must have been written on his face.

Sh'ten's lips twisted in a brief sharp smile. "Yes, Yami Masho. I am to be *imprisoned* here."

Anubis, too late, summoned darkness to his eyes, scowled. "You must deserve it, then, Oni."

As Anubis captured his hands again, forcing them behind his back, the ogre's face was utterly still, unblinking.

K'so. What was going on behind those keen eyes?

Something about the man, silent in front of him, made the Warlord of Darkness ache to crack that perfect façade, to make the redhead scream, or beg for mercy. Or fight back. The attack was always sweeter when the prey was hot-blooded with anger, or fear, or--

Anything but that placid serenity that sat on his features, making him look naked. Vulnerable.

How long had the Oni Masho been *vulnerable*?

Since the ningenkai. Something had happened. Anubis' confusion turned to swift cold anger. Something to break the will of the finest warrior among them? He grinned ferally. Only *he* should be able to do that.

"Do you remember," he said low into Sh'ten's ear, "the first time you lost a combat match to me?"

Sh'ten's lips tightened in the barest snarl. "No," he said shortly, "because it never happened." That much was truth. Sh'ten had always found a way to win-- treacherous or no. Anubis felt his vengeance blossoming, slow and deep.

"Aa." he let the silence stretch a moment. "Then you will remember this as the first time."

Without thinking too closely of his actions, Anubis unwound the scythe and chain from their sheath in the Oni yoroi. Sh'ten exhaled a little too quickly. "Am I also to relieve you of your armor, Oni? Have you wandered so far from the heart of the Dynasty that you must be punished?"

"You will do as your Master bids," Sh'ten said, voice expressionless, his face turned away.

It felt good to feel fierce again, with icy rage singing along his veins. "*My* Master? You have wandered so far indeed."

With an armored palm Anubis reached around to touch Sh'ten's chest, and whispered cold against the other man's ear when he called the armor away. The Oni yoroi screamed deliciously, with the shuddering scree of an armor call in reverse, summoned to a different hand, ripped harshly from familiar flesh. Sh'ten, shaking with the inverted onslaught, was forced to lean into the hand that bound him, lest he lose his footing and fall-- unarmored-- into the pit.

Anubis held him there, till the armor was spent and gone, and the Ogre was panting unsteadily in his arms.

The hazed hot air lifting from the molten rock beneath them began to smell of rotting cherryblossoms, dying spring.

"There," the Yami Masho said, gratified to see the darkness exuding from his hands, his breath. The orb in his hand was an angry orange, pulsing with subdued violence under the brush of his armored fingertip. His own armor was high with the absorbed power, viciously gleeful. With a rough shove, Sh'ten was on his knees, only the long gold-black vest remaining of the splendid Oni yoroi. His eyes were furious, but his face was trembling.

Anubis considered him, lifting a mocking blue-black eyebrow. "Well?"

The Ogre bit his lip, and said nothing.

Anubis stood over him, enemies turned warrior-brothers made enemies yet again. Something resonated, the feel of the man before him, the cycle turnabout of their positions. He lifted him to his feet. That auburn hair, unbound and untamed by a helmet, fell around Sh'ten's eyes, shielding his expression. Anubis lifted a hand to brush away that hair, hoping to see desperation beginning to sheen Sh'ten's wild eyes. But the touch turned into something more, almost a caress, cradling Sh'ten's face beneath that fine sweep of cold fiery hair.

Sh'ten's face did not change-- nor was there anything but hot defiance burning in his eyes-- but he shivered convulsively at the touch.

"Oh, now," Anubis savored the anger and dregs of fear that the other man was projecting as sure as any mystic armor call. "Is that any face for your champion?"

Sh'ten's expression did shift then, from anger to frank disbelief. "You think *you've* done this?" His voice was awful in its quietness. "As if your Master had not orchestrated *all* of this." His fingers twitched, perhaps seeking a forgotten summons, something to reclaim his second skin.

Anubis doubted he could call back the yoroi, but he could not risk it. With deliberate slowness he lifted the abandoned Oni weapon, the long chain skittering slick against the rockface with a sound scornful as Arago's laughter, and wound it, link by link, around Sh'ten's bare wrists. And as he bound his hands behind him, he threw the armor orb, in a glittering arc, to the molten lava below. The lake of fire claimed it with a devilish shriek; and thought the armor could not be destroyed thus, neither could Sh'ten retrieve it.

"Aa. How does that feel, Oni?" He felt the scrape of his gauntlets against the too human skin of Sh'ten's arms, felt him wince.

The Oni tried to sneer, but his mouth was unsteady. "As if you... yourself... were responsible for me," he managed to gasp.

The Yami Masho found it hopelessly delicious, the ragged breathing of his captive, the powerless rage in his green eyes. He smiled. "I think," he said, tightening his hold on the chain, "I had a hand in it, yes." He tilted his face closer to Sh'ten's, feeling the other man's glare. "Feel helpless? Like those little samurai we play with?"

That struck home. Sh'ten arched and tried to kick, but Anubis swiveled him around until he was pinned against his chest. With a desperate surge, Sh'ten freed a hand and covered his face, the armored spikes on Anubis' chest cutting into his palm. "How does it feel, on the other end of the chain?"

"You are a fool," Sh'ten said brokenly, his eyes leaving Anubis' face. "Arago will destroy you."

The Ogre believed his words, Anubis could tell. That more than the threat surprised him. "You needn't *pity* me, Sh'ten," he said brusquely after a moment. "I have chosen this path."

"Have you?" The words had more of a winterchill in them than the Yami Masho's own voice, an echo that bit through even the heated hum of the pit beneath them. Sh'ten, sensing Anubis' distraction, ran a slow wondering fingertip over the other man's scar. His hand bled a little, trickling crimson warmth over the cold flesh. Anubis kept himself perfectly still, and it was Sh'ten who winced, flinching back from the cross-discolored skin.

"You're going to ask me where it came from," Anubis grated through tightly clenched teeth.

Sh'ten brought his face closer to Anubis, spoke directly against the scar that the warmth of his lips might brush the skin as he spoke. "No." The faintest flowerpetal tickles of his breath sent hot shivers through the Yami Masho. "No. I was going to ask you why it is still there."

"What?" It was more an exhalation than a word, as the Oni's clever tongue was tracing the twin lines of it.

"Four hundred years, Anubis, and it's still there. Is there not enough of magic here in the youjakai to heal the wound?"

He stood at a loss for words, the lava moving with a tidal hiss beneath them.

"Or does Arago-sama wish to keep you blemished so that you are never free from your past?"

Anubis shook himself violently away. "Sh'ten!" He chose his words very carefully. "What of my past should I seek to flee? There is nothing I regret."

"Aa." Sh'ten's voice was barely audible, with an arrogant tilt to his smile. He lingeringly kissed the juncture of the two lines, the intersection of the cross. Anubis felt his face flush, a quick raising of blood to the touch at his cheekbone. He felt he was falling, the world rushing up to swallow him-- but something snagged and caught him-- The cold metal links in his hand that bound him to the other Warlord. Light-headed, he felt as though he were swinging with aborted inertia at the end of the line, widening arc out over the face of nothing. He was steel forged cold over a demon fire, how could there be fear? But what else to call that sick surge inside him?

Sh'ten was still speaking, "That is what Arago wishes you to think."

Anubis growled. He could not listen, not here, with the imprint of his Master's commands yet raw in his mind. "Silence, Oni."

He laughed, an ugly sound. "Not the Ogre any longer. If He has taken my armor, why would he not take yours?"

Anubis moved quicker than thought, on the icy tempest of his anger, pulling Oni chains tighter till they drove into both Sh'ten's wrists, tracing more faint bloodrainbows into his palms. But now he did not flinch, or struggle.

Infuriating.

The Warlord of Darkness lowered himself against the unshielded Masho, till naked human flesh was balanced dangerously between the spikes on his breastplate. He smiled hungrily. "You don't really want to make me angry, do you?"

Sh'ten flickered a glance, saw the shined edge of a chest spike grazing his skin with the stuttering movement of his uneven breath. He did not speak.

Anubis, not gratified, slid lower against the standing warlord, gauntleted hands playing almost mischeviously against frail blue-veined skin. "You have broken the magic-bond that Arago-sama tempered between us. I will hear you scream, Sh'ten, for your insolence to the Master." He felt a cruel smile on his lips. "And to your fellow Masho."

With his delicate wolf-fangs he sliced tiny kisses into Sh'ten's flesh, teasing one exposed nipple and then the other to taut points.

Unable to stop his body from responding, Sh'ten had to watch as armored deft fingers swirled along his skin, hard enough to hurt, strong enough to call tremors from some hidden heat deep inside him. A thin trail of crimson trickled from his mouth, but no matter how fiercely he bit his lip, his body was still singing in muted desperation. He could not gasp; the armorplated sharpness left little wounds like openmouthed smiles along his chest.

"And to me," Anubis said hungrily, tasting the salt tang of blood in his kisses. 

With crimson-armored fingers, Anubis followed the faltering pulse of Sh'ten's veins, making a journey of the other man's body, from heartbeat to chain-bound hands to the undisguisable heat between his strongly muscled legs.

Sh'ten made the faintest sound, a growl that was neither submission nor challenge. Anubis' blood keened to the noise, though, the first unfurled petal of the many-layered chrysanthemum of Sh'ten's defenses. How long before the whole man opened, explosive uninhibited spring blooming from the raw, yoroi-peeled skin?

Nothing in the ningenkai could compare to this, surely. Anubis lived through his fingertips, touching ruthlessly, scenting the other man's sweat and thinly veiled panic.

Dancing along the knife-edge of pain and pleasure, Sh'ten struggled to speak. Anubis was startled when he managed to find his voice. "You must have felt it, too."

Anubis, not to be distracted, let his mouth follow his fingers, showing that the tongue was clearly made for better things than speech. Sh'ten moaned, an agonized, half-swallowed sound. "A-- Anu--" His breath caught, his hands tangling in the chain keep his balance. But he continued to speak.

"You must have-- felt it. You fought with the one who wears the Korin yoroi. Such armor is the-- counterpart to yours. You must have felt the draw."

Annoyed, Anubis drew back, thin wolf-fangs grazing tender flesh. "Little you know of combat, then, Oni. Any draw is the call to battle, to conquer." He was pleased to feel that the cold rush of his speech against Sh'ten's desire made him shiver convulsively, made his knees weaken.

"Ah, but conquer... how?" Sh'ten managed through tightly clenched teeth. "This is not the battle we are made for--"

Anubis' hands tightened on Sh'ten's hips, almost cruelly, armored fingertips seeking to bruise the fine-boned skin or make Sh'ten cry out-- anything to stop that flow of words. He took him in his mouth again, fiercely satisfied to hear Sh'ten's sudden silence. 

But he could not prevent the images his mind volunteered, unbidden: a steady violet gaze, and young hands wielding Halo-touched destruction. Beautiful. To conquer-- to take-- He growled low in his throat, rough vibration making Sh'ten shudder and gasp. What sounds would another warrior make, thus helpless under his touch? A younger voice, a corona of blond hair tossed back in abandon--

Sh'ten cried out then, for the first time. His voice echoed roughly against the rockwalled cavern, and Anubis remembered with a hot dizzy rush where he was, and just whose thighs were shaking beneath the onslaught of his mouth, his skilled tongue.

Whose eyes were closed tight, breath hitching in his chest. Anubis watched greedily as the spasms took him, earthquake tremors that rocked him back on his heels, into the armored hands that supported him. His head thrown back, with the cascade of his hair like a waterfall of blood flooding across his shoulders, he looked more full of youki than the Dynasty itself. "Anubis--!" The name was more a skirling cry than a word, the scream that the Yami Masho had hoped for. Had earned.

Anubis held him as he came, drinking his pleasure as an elixir, eyes never leaving his face.

When Sh'ten was again a mortal being, shivering with the fading dregs of magic, Anubis nibbled away the last sheen of his release, enjoying the way Sh'ten's skin danced and quivered beneath his teeth. Enjoying still more Sh'ten's silence, his wordlessness as his final surrender.

"That was for me," he said with narrowed eyes. "If you behave, maybe next time will be for you."

Sh'ten made a sound suspiciously like a moan. "Next time," he repeated, numbly. But his Oni smile was back, something mysterious and fierce.

Anubis was obscurely relieved to see the arrogance in the set of Sh'ten's shoulders. He grinned, winding the chains more loosely around his hands, that he might be bound without discomfort. "That better than anything in the ningenkai, Oni?"

"Hn." Sh'ten looked at him for a long moment, his eyes glowing cherryleaf green. "I have seen more than we ever dreamed, in the ningenkai," he said, not answering the question. His thoughts darted just under the surface of Anubis' comprenhension, like slender elusive koi. "We cannot destroy the world."

Anubis hmphed, breath deliberately teasing the auburn hair at the base of his neck. "Ridiculous," he pronounced with disdain, "You know there is nothing we cannot do, a combined force--"

Sh'ten's voice seemed far away. "Our presence here changes nothing."

Something choked to life inside Anubis, too deep to be a sob, something drawing air for the first time, bewildered understanding. He would leave Sh'ten there, in the dungeon, because he was obedient to the Dynasty. But he could not leave him just yet. "But your presence here has changed us, Sh'ten. *We* are changing."

"You will learn what I mean, Anubis," Sh'ten's voice was oddly gentle, lilting across the darkness of the other Masho's ears.

Anubis drew him closer, to ward off the chill sparkling from his own skin. And there, he found himself held against that bare mortal chest, hearing a familiar rhythm beneath his labored breathing.

Sh'ten's heartbeat.

Aa. Some things still made sense.

~end part two~


	3. Spring's Requiem

****

Spring's Requiem 

By [Tenshi no Korin][1]

Splinters.

When had the bridges become so weathered? Nothing in the dynasty feels age, nothing. The bridges in my mind are fresh-lacquered and sleek as a black snake, gleaming in symmetrical coils over streams of blue green water. Exotic scales of fish flash mirrors to the sun and double moons of the golden sky. The whole realm could have been lifted from the side of a painted screen, or stolen from the flutter of a courtesan's jeweled fan.

That world no longer exists. Now tiny fragments of rotting wood prick at my palms, no doubt damaging the homespun fabric wound around them. Rough woven cotton, not silk, not armor. What I had been born into wearing, so long ago. What I would die wearing, I realize.

Not in silk.

Not in Armor.

My socks are wet.

I suddenly want to laugh.

Mighty Sh'ten, greatest of the MaSho. Once. Maybe still. I stare death in the face, standing on a decaying bridge in a decaying world, equipped with splinters and armored in muddy tabi socks. I can think of nothing nobler.

I would have liked to see their faces, but I understand there is no time for that now. There was faint comprehension behind their face guards before the barges drew them into their cold embrace; I can only wonder what they are thinking now. I pray to have bought them time enough, to have peeled away most of the rotting silk bindings wrapped around them. I wonder what they would look like free. I have no memory of them without the stain of his shadow, even at the

very beginning. Then they were as sharp and beautiful as flowers trimmed in ice. I can imagine their eyes without the darkness, and I feel faintly the armor bond that was perverted by Arago. It is sluggish now but still true, and I wonder at the blaze that must run through the blood of the Five, consuming them with each other. I do not know if they have thought to become lovers yet. I envy them the unraveling of such shared fire. I feel myself smile at my own memory, an unaccustomed motion.

"Sh'ten?" She is confused. She has right to be. How odd my armor looks on her, surely as unsuited to her as the robes are to me. Our roles are traded, but only briefly. Even now I can still feel the pull of the oni; it is not long for her skin. I will not open my arms to it upon its return. The Yoroi does not know such things, however. It does not predict.

Speaking is agony, small things tearing away from their moorings within me, my soul shaking away shackles of five hundred years. "You are free, Kayura."

My vision swims with my own image, thrown in distorted waves back at me from the muddy surface of this stream. It is not the likeness I see, though. The reflection I remember is a quiet park pool in the human world, the amber glow of loyalty aflame on my brow.

Brothers, do you know? Can you feel it? Is it not glorious, the true strength in our hands, the true names burning on our lips? I can fly with it now, letting go of splintered pathetic wood, opening my arms to the horizon unrolling before me like silk. I know, my fierce ones. I understand. Love should not be a warriors' word, but I think it is the only one we know.

* * *

Ripples fanned out slowly from the quiet form in brackish yellow water, his crimson hair drifting like seaweed. There was a surprised clink of armor, and a child's anguished cry. The tiger could not weep, and only blinked his great brown eyes, lowering his heavy head in respect.

There was no time to do more than lift him from the water, Jun's sniffles stifled by the sight of Sh'ten's calm face. Nasuti brushed away the damp strands clinging to his elegant features. Kayura arranged him with his head to the north, brilliant emerald eyes forever shut and turned to the east. She sat back on her heels and was quiet for a long moment, then offered one long, respectful bow.

The tiger tarried briefly after they left, nuzzling his great furred muzzle under limp fingers, snuffling a quiet farewell.

* * *

Rajura found him first. It was only fitting; he had been the scout to first notify Lord Arago of a young man with promise, wasting his talent fighting skirmishes in the provinces. He wished it had been one of the others.

It might have been easier had Kayura kept the armor of spring, but with Arago's demise it had vanished. None of them had thought to ask where, finding it here instead, wrapped around the slender warrior on the riverbank. The armor was too familiar on him, lacquered with memory, and Rajura's one violet eye burned with a strange remembered sensation.

Anubisu pushed past him in impatience and stopped, staring. His kneeplates sank deep in river-mud, armored fingers shivering as they touched cool wet hair. His jaw tensed and he gathered Sh'ten in his arms, lifting his still face to the gilded dynasty sky. Naaza stepped forward then, kneeling beside the Yami MaSho and clenching his fist in quiet, helpless rage. Autumn and Winter understood such things, deny them though they might wish to. Rajura spun summer

and preservation in his webs, riots of blooming life and noisy insects. This silence chilled his blood.

But he drew near nonetheless, sinking into the clay beside his companions, reaching unwilling hands to untangle crimson hair, to brush river grass from the tooled leather coat.

How long they sat there they did not know, but it seemed years before Anubisu brushed lips across the extinguished forehead, cradling cruel breastplate to cruel breastplate and pressing ravaged cheek to cool temple. Naaza relieved Anubisu of his reluctant burden, offering no farewell but the touch of brow to brow, bearing their fallen back to the castle.

Rajura offered next, aching to think of the last time they had borne Sh'ten between them. He had twisted with defiance in their hands, hands that bruised the perfect skin and bloodied sculpted lips, tore the ruddy glory of hair. He submitted himself willingly to the Gen MaSho, more defiance in stilled lips than in his furious indignation. Sharp, too sharp, to think of never hearing that voice again.

"So, beautiful oni. You beat us to this as well." Rajura's breath stirred his eyelashes, an illusion of waking.

He felt the other two flanking him, lifting their uncovered heads to the arched portal of the castle. Wildfire's swords had left scores in the wood; Naaza thoughtfully pulled a gold arrow from the frame and frowned at bedraggled fletching. 

"Where do we go from here, Rajura?" Anubisu, sounding strained and pensive. "Back through these gates again?"

"They are the only gates we know, Anubisu." Rare words from Naaza, composed and lucid in the sunset light of the youjakai. "All our daring, all of us that is change is here." The green gauntlet was pulled away, bare skin pressing to the stillness of Sh'ten's chest. "Empty. What are we without spring?"

"What would you have us do, die?" Anger was swift in the scarred ice of Anubisu's eyes, pain as raw and new as the scar of his identity must have been at first cut.

"I would not have you do anything, Yami MaSho. I was not sculpted to command." His eyes slitted, grief thrown aside for the readiness of rage. 

"Damn your forked tongue! Don't throw such calm words at me! I would-"

"Did he mean so little to you?"

That silenced them like contrite children, eyes flickering to Rajura's burden and away. "We are old, but so was he. None of us were made to change, to adapt. But are we so weak that we cannot learn? Always Sh'ten set our challenges. Tempted us. Enraged us. Forced us to outdo him. Dared us to love him. Will we turn our backs on this last task? Sh'ten returned to his humanity. He gave his life. He learned to change for what he believed in." Rajura lifted his too-bright gaze to the other two, standing silent in the doorway. "We will not let him best us in this, will we, brothers?"

The wind blew, snapping Anubisu's cape like a battle flag and tangling Sh'ten's hair. The Dynasty seemed to howl with sorrow at the loss of her red-topped child, sudden rain spattered on armor and shook petals from sakura in the castle garden. As one they bore him up on their shoulders, uneven number for an honor guard. The gates of the castle swung open to admit them, and four passed through it in determined silence.

~end part three~

   [1]: http://www.fanfiction.net/index.fic/?action=directory-authorProfile&userid=8972



	4. Summer's Dream-Spinning

**Death of Spring: Summer's Dream-spinning**

i hear you, i hear you, whispering such gorgeous stories

i see you, i see you, trying to break free

you liar, you liar, you can't live the dreams you're spinning

you liar, love to be deceived

-- james, "p.s."

I swore, at the beginning, that I would never regret my decisions.

Easy enough. I never thought to wonder about those decisions that were not mine to make, locked in a silken dynasty cage and sharpened like a living weapon.

I was neither darkness nor light, I was shadow; the hot summer sort of shadow, spiderfine and strong, hiding whispered promises and the neglected dreams of children. Or the forgotten ones. I have lived too long within illusions to exist without them now, but here I stand, with little other choice.

Words of mine-- to shape and weave a world of golden sky and crystal rain. Words to make aged rice wine at an emperor's feast seem thin and tasteless.

There is nothing comparable here in the ningenkai, this fractured place where words are spoken to die. 

My eye twitches, muscle reflex that is impossible to quell, even all these years later. Aa. I, too, was once spoken to die.

Once. I woke with Words in my head.

Rare blessing, that. How long since unbidden Words had seeped into my sleeping mind, impatient for release? Trying not to think on it too hard lest I frighten them away, I rose from bed, sliding long legs from the sheets and crossing swiftly to my cherrywood cabinets. Delving in, my hands found ink, and brushes, clean and pure, begging for the stain of indigo. I opened a low drawer, seeking paper--

None.

Oh, there was paper. The sort that was more of furnishing than writing, harsh rice-grained stuff for reports or Arago-sama's decrees. Nothing of the heavy, sweet pages that would call to the Words waiting in my mind, cradle them, define them.

There was nothing of sufficient worth that I could call to hand.

On my low bed, my lover stirred, hand moving blindly for my abandoned cushion. The movement disturbed the sheet clinging precariously to his skin, and it slid off with a near-silent rustle, baring his back.

Sh'ten's fine, smooth, pristine back, gently rising and falling with each deep sleep-breath.

I returned to the bed as quickly as I had left, hands no longer empty.

Sh'ten stirred sleepily, my touch now familiar enough that it no longer brought him immediately to wakefulness. "What are you doing, Rajura?"

"I've had Words given to me, Sh'ten," I heard my voice saying, careful not to disrupt the flow of them from my thought to my hand. "You are my scroll."

He laughed, lazily, a luxurious sound in the still sweet air of my room. "Your palimpsest, you mean, Spider-fingers." A low chuckle in his throat made his skin tremble a bit. "Damn ticklish."

"What?" I asked distractedly, sweeping stray tendrils of his hair back over his shoulder. I was entranced by the liquid indigo staining his shoulderblade, the word 'anticipation' looking never so chillingly delicious as on his vibrant skin.

"You wrote upon me surely enough last evening, my forgetful one," Sh'ten said huskily, a featherfine tremor shivering across his spine. "With your hands in the stead of a brush, your mouth in stead of inks. Do you seek to overwrite *those* Words?"

My mouth was dry. He was always surprising me, in those days. All I could see of his face was his profile, resting on his spread hands. "What I seek, red-topped child, is to free the Words that came to me when I was sleeping."

"After I wore you out," he pretended to yawn. "Old man." On his stomach, he moved against the bed, the slightest twist of his hips, and my body sought to prove that it was not so old as he claimed.

I swallowed. "Be still. I'm almost done."

And, obedient, he was still, though surely he could feel the heat of me against his side.

"Poetry, hm?" His tone was not quite conversational, and I could sense the tension building in the small of his back. I drew 'winter' with its quick snowfall brushstrokes and he supressed a tight laugh. "Surely this is an ancient form of torture."

"Not poetry," I said. "Words." Those which had always been mine, immortal words when I was yet ningen and foolhardy. Or perhaps I am still foolhardy. "Older than poetry. More powerful."

When I painted 'spring' with its long sweeping curve right at the base of his spine, he hissed through his teeth.

"Must be the beginning of the end, when the old man begins writing poetry." But I could hear the undercurrent in his voice, that he too could feel the lift of spirit from my brush, the veil of power laying across his skin. He sounded almost-- frightened?-- when he asked, "Will you tell me what you're spelling?"

I looked down at the poem, if that were word enough to describe the canvas of living word I-- we-- had created, and shuddered. ~Spelling the end of us.~ But I could not say it, for all that I recognized the truth.

Autumn's anticipation.

Winter's deliverance.

Here, the death of spring.

It was not completed, and yet it had to be-- it had spoken itself as haiku, and there the form ended. My mouth felt raw, as if I'd said the words aloud, a prophecy. But I could not speak.

"You won't read it," Sh'ten said, sounding weary.

I wanted to say that I could not, that to say it was to bring it to be; but it was too far truth for my one small voice to make much of a difference. "I-- it is not the poem I expected it to be," I said at last.

He smiled sharply. I thought it was relief that I had done, that he would sit up and shake the ticklish feeling away. But he met my eyes, and knowingly. "It never is, Rajura." He twisted around on my bed till he lay on his back, Words achingly concealed. "Was *I* the poem you thought I would be?" And he brought me down against him in one slow redolent movement, hips rolling up to meet mine, bright knowing lips seeking and caressing my every shadow.

There was more than one reason Sh'ten was spring to us, youthful fool that he was. All I could remember was how to touch him, which corners of sensitive flesh would make him gasp, and which murmur my name. There was always the hint of sakura in his sweat, of plumblossoms and clove in the rich fall of his hair.

He could make the purest out of what we had to give, distilling heated blood and tightened passion into something more intense than words-- and he did so relentlessly. There was no defeat or surrender, only the deep intoxicating tautness of his body, both his offering and his demand.

He held me, or I held him, I cannot remember, and the tsunami thundered through us and past us... And we were only men again, as much as we ever were, stuttering heartbeats and upheaval of breath. As if the bittersweet truth written on his back had always been there, his touch burned just the same against my skin.

Too late I realized he was turning his head and I could not stop him.

There, gracing our rumpled sheets in nearly pristine negative, were the Words. They looked perched on the soft fabric, ready to unfold their indigo wings and leap into being.

Sh'ten was silent for a long moment, his eyes unreadable. "Those are the Words you dreamt, Rajura?"

I could only nod. How I had hoped he would never read them, never hear them spoken.

"You've left yourself out," He murmured, catching up my hand and absently rubbing my brush-stained fingers, speaking what I myself had only begun to notice. "Hardly fair, Spider-fingers, to weave yourself out of the web." 

"There isn't any more," I said, trying to disguise the grieving. No surcease from my eternal wondering, there were no Words for me.

To my surprise, Sh'ten laughed. He touched a finger to my face, gently tracing the eyelid of my one unseeing eye. I flinched a little, more from the unexpected sound of his laugh than his questing touch. "Of course there is more, Gen Masho. It just wasn't given to *you*. Your blind spot."

And he picked up my discarded brush and ink, kneeling before my bed. With sure hands he created another line of words-- oh but surely they were Words, the way his eyes caught fire-- beneath my own reverse poem. Looking self-satisfied, he smiled to himself, pointed a drippy brush to the arrogant sweep of his handwriting: self-taught, aesthetically disconcerting, and absolutely perfect.

Summer's dream-spinning.

I had been startled to realize I loved him, brash red-headed child, and still more so to learn thus that I would lose him. One does not expect to know the ending of the poem when one is only beginning to savor the opening bloom of words.

But nothing was so suprising as knowing-- heady, vertiginous knowing, watching the joy in his spring-destiny eyes-- that this selfish fierce soul was capable of pure Words. For *me*.

Perhaps we were not quite spoken to die, after all.

~end~


End file.
